BeyondTrust Network Security Scanner, powered by Retina (Legacy) vs. Kaseya VSA

Retina Network Security Scanner is well suited for any environment and infrastructure that would like to expose security deficiencies across their network as well as visualize vulnerabilities as they pertain to assets in their environment. I cannot think of any scenario that would not be appropriate for this product. Since the product carries over to pretty much all assets in your environment, I don't know off the top of y head what it wouldn't be appropriate for.

Incentivized

This package is well suited for businesses of any size that needs a method of connecting to systems on or off the network. This is one of the few packages that doesn't require the end user to provide permission before allowing the techs to connect which is what my agency needed as we have a majority of our systems are used by "general public" that walk in our doors and if they are doing something that they are not supposed to it would be unlikely that they would grant permission for us to access the systems.

Incentivized

• Besides the fact that Retina NSS performs the fundamental task of scanning all my network devices, one of the main strengths is the speed at which it scans. Time is money and I know people tent to wear that cliché out a bit, but when you are as small as we are of a team, every minute counts.
• We have utilized other network security scanners over the past 21 years and Retina NSS seems to have the smallest footprint with no evidence of scanning degrading performance of the devices scanned.
• They seem to update their database frequently enough that we notice a correlation of threats to discovery.
• There is a small learning curve, but overall, a seasoned IT professional can quickly get up and running in a few hours and get usable results quickly. This falls back on the speed at which Retina NSS scans. My previous network security scanners would sometimes take hours to complete a full vulnerability scan of between 250 - 400 devices, now it only takes a fraction of that time.

Incentivized

• Scripting - Very powerful scripting engine that allows us to update/install applications and maintain PC's and Servers.
• Policy Management - Globally configured policies allowing us to make changes to thousands of PC's quickly.
• Monitoring - Monitoring engine allows us to Proactively respond to alerts quickly minimizing downtime significantly.
• Patch Management - This module requires minimal effort to manage and maintain.

Incentivized

• I do not have any obvious cons to report at this time.

Incentivized

• The only area I can see where a lot of room for improvement can be made is in scripting of Agent procedures. Making operations more modular and able to be assembled by technicians who might not be strong in a scripting environment would be helpful. In the mean time, Kaseya has an entire site and a whole team of developers who write Agent procedures for common tasks and make them available for free to all Kaseya VSA customers.

Incentivized

Excellent product with easy learning curve

Incentivized

I think this is a solid tool for enterprise IT, however it would be higher if Kaseya VSA addresses the areas raised around recent stability, their support team, multiple session & screen support etc. It does do it's main job and allows an easy way for IT to operate and is mostly fine.

Incentivized

It was lots of back and forth email communication whenever I tried to solve my connection issues. I would send them detailed logs of the date, time, computer, and more of when I was experiencing connection issues. All I would get is an email back a few days later saying that they didn't find an issue in the service

Incentivized

Retina Network Security Scanner is the only product we have used in our enterprise. I have used a product in the past called GFI LanGuard Network Security Scanner and while it did perform the functions of vulnerability testing, etc...it just wasn't nearly as refined as Retina NSS. It was slow and was not as lightweight as Retina as far as end-user detection.

Incentivized

We moved away from NinjaRMM for support of PowerShell scripting and APIs. Overall, the experience with NinjaRMM, though limited in features, was tenfold better than our experience with VSA. We have been desiring strongly to move away from VSA to N-Central (having been provided a full demo that we installed on our cloud infrastructure) but have been unable to do so due to Kaseya's draconian contract policies. It's important to note that NinjaRMM was allowing us to go month-to-month and switching to Kaseya VSA was one of the worst business decisions I ever made. It's equally important to note that, if you are considering Kaseya VSA, you will be locked into a 3-year contract that is nearly impossible to escape from once the documents are signed. SolarWinds N-central only requires a 1-year contract and then has month-to-month billing available. I can provide no good reason for anyone to consider Kaseya VSA when there are dozens of better systems out there to choose from.

• The product is extremely easy to deploy, extremely positive.
• If you take full advantage of this product as I did, you will maximize your ROI quickly as we did.
• We were able to visualize our vulnerabilities efficiently and effectively and maintain scheduled scans that allowed us to maintain a continuous improvement atmosphere while securing our investments.
• The ability provide reporting allows our IT department to prioritize issues and remediate as required without chasing down low risk issues over high risk issues that need immediate attention.

Incentivized

• It has increased the efficiency of operational tasks for our technicians
• It has change the speed at which we are able to deploy updates and software patches
• It caused us to spend additional money on more security tools due to concern from breaches

Incentivized